Everyone plays. Nobody runs the game.

Bohemia, 1543. Two summers of famine follow the plague, and unpaid soldiers crowd the border. Above Vranohrad, a fort abandoned for sixty years now sends winged shapes over the valley at night. Burgrave Otakar Vlk hires you to investigate and guard his commission: the priest Jelen, his wife Marta, a gaoler, and Dalibor, a prisoner offered a pardon for his help. You ride at dawn. Whatever is in the fort has begun coming down to the farms.

The Adriatic coast, 1576. An exceptional low tide has exposed the causeway to Veyr Castle for the first time in forty years. Three salvage workers went inside yesterday; this morning someone waves their red scarf from an upper window. The harbor guild hires you to bring them back before tonight's tide covers the roof. Inside, salt-stiff curtains hang over laid tables, and a voice patiently counts the silver. It has noticed three extra people in the house. It will notice you, too.

The northern border, 1619. Peace has come, and Rookscar Keep is being emptied for sale. Then the masons open a bricked passage. That evening twelve soldiers in rotten coats take the walls, and the watch bell rings from a tower with no stairs. Lady Aveline Marr hires you to get her household out before the buyer arrives in three days. At the first midnight muster, the dead sergeant reads the servants' names. There are empty places in his ranks, and he is waiting for an answer.

You are a day's ride from anywhere when Lammas Ford offers you a bed for the night. The inn is warm, the keeper is generous, and there is a harvest gathering that half the village presses you to attend. The bread is very good and there is a great deal of it. Later, when the music stops and an old woman carries a bound sheaf into the barn, you will learn what accepting it meant: every adult in the room draws a straw, one straw is short, and whoever draws it is walked into forty acres of corn before dawn.

Jack Hagans, host and executive producer of the paranormal programme Ghost Aggressions, is hiring security. He is going to Oweynagat — the Cave of the Cats, the hole in the ground the locals call the gate to hell — and he intends to be inside it at midnight on Samhain, when the things that live down there come up for the year. The money is very good. His crew of three have stopped making eye contact with one another. He has forty pounds of equipment, a signature leather coat, and a plan. There are offerings heaped at the cave mouth going back generations. He has not brought one.

Edinburgh, 1828. Greyfriars Kirkyard has lost three night watchmen in three months — not to the resurrection men selling corpses to the anatomy schools, but to whatever draws those men here. You are the new watch: patrol after dark with a lamp, keep the Covenanters' graves whole, and find what is calling the robbers in. Something in the Black Mausoleum has noticed you, it grows bolder every night you fail to answer it, and it means to see this watch off before the season ends.

Martinmas, 1583 — the day new servants are taken on across the county. Seven daughters of minor noble houses were sent to Nádashely Castle for service and schooling. None came home, and the countess's letters of condolence are word for word identical. Hired on with the season's staff, you are in truth the eyes of Lord Ferenc Bethlen, who wants proof a magistrate cannot ignore. The old servants flinch at certain doors and count each other at supper. The guard answers to the countess; so do the magistrates. Write to Bethlen before the snow closes the passes, and do not be caught writing.

First frost, 1887. In six weeks Crowmoor has taken eleven sheep, two moor ponies, and the shepherd who went out after them. His dog came home alone and will not go back up. Thornhowe has stopped pretending it is a wolf — the village has raised a subscription, wired down for guns, and put out word for anyone willing to go onto the moor and finish it. You came in on the evening train. There is no mystery here and nobody is hiding anything: the thing is real, it is out there, and now that the frost has emptied the high ground it is working down toward the houses a night at a time.

A grief-maddened sorcerer hires the party to recover love letters, heirlooms, and magically preserved body parts from his dead lover's abandoned family home. If they return before the equinox moon rises, he promises the collection will fuel one forbidden resurrection.

Every decade, when Whispering Woods turns fiery amber, the elusive Star-Spindle Elves descend to host their Autumn Equinox Market. Its ancient wood-carved Aethel-Clock channels the forest's magic into true prophecies for the coming year—but on the festival's eve, the clock's heart vanishes. Hired as caretakers and investigators, the party must recover it and deliver the grand fortune before the final equinox sunset or the forest will freeze in an eternal winter.

Every year, a quiet farming village grows the Great Hearthwood Maze to honor the spirits of autumn. The Harvest Heart at its center keeps every village hearth warm through the bitter winter, but this year a mischievous breeze spirit has bound itself to the maze and split the Heart into three glowing embers. The party must navigate the shifting corn, recover all three embers, and return them to the village square before the festival can end.

Oat-toberfest is hours from its opening toast when dwarven brewmaster Barnaby Stoutheart loses yet another barrel of Solstice Stout, the glowing amber ale he spent five years perfecting. Mischievous Hop-Stalker Sprites—tiny leaf-wrapped fey with dried-hop wings—keep teleporting each batch away. Barnaby hires the party to follow them, recover the festival's missing masterpiece, and secure the brewery before the final shipment vanishes.

The Mayor of Oakhaven panics when beloved librarian Mr. Abernathy vanishes after delivering a library card to the wealthy, eccentric Gloomwoods, who have just moved into the fog-shrouded manor at the end of Elm Street. The party must pose as the neighborhood welcome committee, arrive with an autumn squash pie, survive the family's enthusiastic hospitality, and quietly learn what happened without exposing the investigation.

Each party member is the child of a legendary hero. None of them asked for this.

The target is a dragon's vault. The crew is assembled. The plan is perfect. The plan will not survive contact with the dragon.

The party is famous. Too famous. NPCs ask for autographs mid-combat. The actual villain is mostly annoyed they didn't get invited to the party's podcast.

The war is over. The party just wants to get back to their lives. The world has other plans.

A complete story in a single session: you wake up in a cell, something terrible is coming, and dawn is three hours away.